


Leave Our Stupid Songs

by musiclily88



Series: Wasted Youth// There Wasn't Much to Waste [33]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Self-Harm, Substance Abuse, Underage Substance Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:18:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They went to some shitty club in some shitty part of London</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave Our Stupid Songs

**Author's Note:**

> HI IT HAS BEEN FOREVER I LOVE YOU

They went to some shitty club in some shitty part of London, and Louis followed along because he didn’t have to plan anything, only had to trail into the cab and let his lips go slack and sloppy. He pulled smiles wide and fast as he knocked elbows with Niall, who sat in the bitch middle seat after very little arguing. Their weird little trio bumped around in the taxi like tipsy pinballs, an encapsulated and beautiful disaster.

The problems arrived only once they tumbled out of the car and into the queue for the club, even though Niall’s sweet talk and sweet smile saw them to the front of the line. They collected Barbara along the way, Niall slinking an arm around her waist easily as Liam rolled his eyes. Queues gave Louis too much quiet time and not enough additional drinking, so he was mostly just left with a downsliding mood and nothing to distract him besides Liam. And Liam on a good day was only so distracting when neither he nor Louis was looking to pull the other.

Louis was about to give up his bravado and let his shoulders slump when Niall ducked into Barbara’s purse and removed a bejweled flask. “Oh bless you,” Louis muttered, gently knocking his shoulder against Barbara’s.

“I’m actually surprised you don’t keep one constantly on hand,” she mused, bumping his shoulder in return.

Louis nearly squawked unattractively but managed to refrain. He’d worn his best skinnies for this, honestly. “I don’t have space in these jeans, obviously.” He rolled his eyes and took a solid pull of the proferred vodka.

Her laugh was light and twinkling. “The things we do for fashion,” she admitted, nodding.

Liam shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“We know,” Barbara and Louis responded in unison.

That made it Liam’s turn to pout.

Eventually they were joined in the line by Harry and Zayn—and the people behind them protested until Harry offered to share his chips, his own stash of vodka, and eventually Louis’ body.

“Why not yours? You’re the one who cut the queue.”

“Those are the jeans you wear when you want to get laid,” Harry said with a small shrug. “Figured I’d get the ball rolling.”

“I’ll get your ball rolling,” Louis muttered.

“Oh are we rolling tonight? Who’s holding?” Zayn’s head had snapped up when Louis spoke, and now he had Zayn’s full attention.

“Not tonight, Satan. You’re handsy at the best of times and I refuse to let this spider-monkey within twenty feet of my junk if he’s on molly,” Louis said, gesturing to Harry with only a bit of guilt and some silent hand-holding. The heartlessness was mostly an act but the statement wasn’t: no one needed Harry on anything, not hallucinogenics, uppers, or downers. Everyone just needed to leave Harry alone.

And Zayn was not falling in line with this mandate, not at all, as he was in the midst of wrapping himself around Harry like a snake, their arms twining up and Zayn cuddling his face into Harry’s neck.

Louis went cold with it, setting his mouth into a hard line before he (graciously) sucked from Barbara’s flask again, careful not to let the tepid vodka leak out of his mouth. He watched Liam throw an arm around Niall’s slim shoulders, thought he should have stolen Niall’s deep-v tee rather than wearing his own burgundy thing, given the tightness of the collar.

Niall on his part was focused on Barbara, slowly curling his fingers through a strand of her hair, flicking out the end. Barbara was thumbing through her phone and vaguely attending to the long-winded story that Harry was telling about how he’d acquired his cheesy chips (it involved nearly diving into a skip and having to recount the plot of The Hobbit complete with dramatic reennactment, for some ungodly reason) while Zayn smoked a cigarette, and by the end of it all Louis was just humming some random Beatles song to himself.

Things were bleak when Louis brought in the Beatles.

Instead of attending to that he slapped at Zayn’s hand and wordlessly demanded a fag too, lighting it so he wouldn’t say something idiotic.

 

He had a flair for the idiotic, all things accounted for.

 

Louis at least refrained from rolling—but he still had to watch Zayn and Harry make wide cow-eyes at one another, had to watch them grind their hips together like it’s nothing, except somehow the world was ending.

To Louis, the world was ending.

And Louis took a breath, because the world was of course constantly ending, not just his but everyone’s.

And that was fine, in some ways, except that Liam was also wrapped around Niall and Barbara, was lighting into them like his oxygen depended on their presence. Everyone was wrapped into someone else except Louis, and Louis was feeling spiteful.

Louis knew he had this tendency, this propensity to get stuck in his own misery. So he put on a stoic face—his bravest face, if he were being honest—and set his jaw. He wanted to make an effort, a real one: a Herculean one, a Sisyphean one, an Escher-esque one, pointless, never-ending, and kind of breathtaking. 

And he was cleraly too up in his own head even now, six shots deep and weaving slightly. Even now. Then, when they were near the front of the queue, Zayn flicked him in the nose with one finger and gave him a hard, bright smile. “Look alive, sunshine.”

“Just feeling it a little is all.” Louis shrugged.

“Good. Gotta loosen you up a bit, eh?”

Harry leered. “Bet a good lay would loosen him up equally well!” he crowed, planting a wet kiss on Louis’ temple.

“Gross.” Zayn rolled his eyes and shoved at Harry’s shoulder.

“You make crude jokes too!” Harry insisted, offended.

“My jokes are _sophisticated._ Not crude.”

“Uh huh.” Harry finished his chips and washed the last bite down with a pull from Barbara’s flask.

Having their attention didn’t actually make anything better, and that was how Louis knew it was going to be a long night.

They eventually reached the front of the queue and headed straight for the bar—except for Barbara, who immediately got dragged away by a giggling girl who Louis didn’t really recognize. Both Niall and Zayn stared at their wake until Louis snapped his fingers and told them off.

“You’re falling right into the stereotype that men are dogs, you know.”

“I just—didn’t know she was friends with Gigi, that’s all,” Zayn muttered.

“They make a pretty picture,” Niall added.

Louis ducked close to Zayn. “Careful there. Don’t want to go neglecting you _own_ pretty young thing.”

“We’re just friends,” Zayn snapped before shooting Harry a guilty look. Harry paid no attention—he was too bust flirting with the bartender, an admittedly gorgeous woman well out of Harry’s league.

“God, you people are hopeless.” Louis threw his hands up and nearly clocked Liam in the face. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Liam handed him a rum and coke before taking a sip of his own beer. “Dance?”

Louis shrugged. “Suppose.”

They snaked their way through the crowd until they found a spot to breathe. Louis tipped back half his drink so as not to spill on anyone right as—right as Liam positively _launched_ himself forward, hitting their hips together flush, pulling Louis in close.

Immediately, Louis had a full-body, visceral flashback to when he and Liam were still fucking. The memory made him angry and reactionary, which made him grind in to Liam even harder, hitting their hips together almost violently. For his part, Liam didn’t seem to mind all that much, as he ground into Louis as good as he was given.

It was unnerving at worst and too comfortable at best, and it made Louis rethink almost everything.

He looked to one side and saw Harry and Zayn wrapped up in one another, everyone else forgotten. He saw Niall surrounded by a group of pretty-pretty girls, saw his bright smile and his gentle willingness to play host to happy people.

Of a sudden, Louis needed to leave. Needed to and wanted to.

“This is weird,” Louis muttered, backing away abruptly. He knocked into other people and didn’t apologize. He ducked away before the opportunity to do something unforgivable and stupid actually arose and slapped him in the face.

 

He didn’t say good-bye to anyone, which was probably also stupid but also necessary. Louis was okay with embarrassing himself if it kept boredom at bay, especially at parties and clubs, but he couldn’t abide utter dissatisfaction.

So he left.

***  
The next morning was something else, something bizarre, but then, most of Louis’ mornings were bizarre at best.

His step-father was making breakfast, standing in front of their six-burner range with two skillets hot on top.

“What are—you’re making pancakes?” Louis 

“Crepes,” he corrected, before he swore lightly under his breath.

“Oh. Sure.”

“Harder than it looks, isn’t it.”

Louis shrugged. “The first one’s always a bit crap.”

“Bit like first-borns,” his step-father added on an exhale.

“Lovely.”

“Sorry, I didn’t—that wasn’t—” he spluttered, waving a spatula in the air and nearly running into Louis.

“I’m sure.” Louis sighed, moving to get a bottle of water from the fridge.

“You want one?”

“Two. One with Nutella and one with ham and cheese.”

“Ah.” His step-father poked at the pan gently.

“If you can manage it,” Louis amended.

“I can—”

“Would you like me to do it instead?”

“Do you mind?”

Louis stepped into his step-father’s space, taking the spatula and effectively shunting him away from the stove. Louis heard him make a pitcher of bloody Marys, but he barely paid attention until one was handed to him absently. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Make me one with the blackberry preserves?”

“Sure, sure.” Louis focused on the hob and not on the mobile buzzing in his pocket.

 

For almost two days, he ignored his buzzing-and-then-dead mobile.

He ignored a lot of things, like his friends and his volunteer job and his mother. He paid attention to his siblings, swimming with them and reading them stories before bed. His mother was nearly set to pop with another set of twins and Louis had no idea how to manage that except by avoiding—he moved his siblings sideways, shoved them into activities and into silliness.

And he went to school quietly and he behaved a bit, but he let his phone stay silent and dead.

And everything was fine.

***

Louis set up fort in Lottie’s room for a day or so, grabbing blankets and four pillows and camping out in the corner acrost from her bed. She almost stumbled over him, at one point, before giving him sad-eyes and a heartfelt sigh.

Then she grabbed a bottle of some weird Kiehl’s lotion and chucked it at his head before yanking her sleeves up to reveal her self-harm scars. “Help or get out,” she demanded sweetly. She curled up on top of one duvet and held out an arm.

“I love you too,” Louis murmured, opening the bottle to put some lotion onto his fingers. The action felt weird and intimate and not like something one should do with one’s sister—and yet here Louis was, putting cucumber-scented cream on Lottie’s shins, calves, knees, forearms, and biceps. “You’re covered.”

“I don’t do it anymore,” she said, one shoulder higher than the other in a mild shrug.

“But it still needs—this, or whatever.”

“Tender love and care? Yeah, well, they still itch, so.” She hitched her shirt-dress up around her elbows to afford proper access, her bare legs giving him ample room to help.

“How’s your girl?”

“She’s good. How are your boys?”

Louis snorted. “You make it sound like I formed a gang or something. With switchblades and flick combs.”

“The Tommo T-Birds?” she ventured with a smile, angling her leg to allow for greater access to her ankle.

“Indeed.”

***

Louis fell asleep on Lottie’s floor at around ten-thirty on a Thursday, open-mouthed and drooling.

He was awoken by someone with callused hands shaking him awake, fingers pressed to his jaw and shoulder. Louis was overheated despite being shirtless and wearing only trackies, despite it all.

“What the fuck, Li,” Louis ground out, voice coming rough from his sleepy throat.

“I need you to be awake.”

“What time is it? What fucking day even, I don’t—” Louis tried to lever himself up, tried to open himself up to the room and to Liam.

“Louis. It’s Liam and it’s like Friday and I need you. Now.”

Louis hummed a bit, focusing his eyes onto Liam. “Kay. What’s—oh my Christ, Liam, tell me that’s not a fucking gun.”

“It’s a fucking gun,” Liam confirmed, holding it like a biting snake, far away from his face. “I don’t—” he snorted a bit before shoving the gun into his back pocket. “I need you.”

“Don’t kill me please.”

“I’m not going to kill you!” Liam crowed, moving to grab Louis by the shoulders. “I need your help!”

“Fine, okay, let me be—not here.” Louis struggled his way out of his duvet and crumpled bedsheets, shoving them into the corner of Lottie’s darkened room. Lottie, for her part, was watching them with wide eyes from her spot in her bed. Louis bolted out of her room and headed to his, hitting the lights as Liam stumbled into him. “What the fuck are you even doing, bringing a gun into this house, what in—”

Louis sat down hard onto his floor, with Liam getting to his knees before him.

“You’ve already seen it, it’s—it’s Zayn’s gun and my dad’s set to get out of prison I think and my mum almost found this fucking thing I can’t have that!”

“Hey, babe, stop it, you’re, everything’s okay.” Louis carded one hand into Liam’s short hair, trying to forget he had a gun in his pocket.

“It isn’t, it’s just not,” Liam sobbed, his chin knocking down to hit his chest. “I can’t do this.”

“Do—what now, babe? Do what?”

“I can’t do anything, can’t go to school knowing he’s out there, can’t exist knowing he wants, that he wants—” Liam started to sob, dropping forward so his face hit Louis’ shoulder. “And my mum, she almost found this, goddamn it, I can’t hide fucking anything.” The heat of Liam’s tears hit Louis’ neck which made Louis curl an arm around Liam’s shoulders.

“You’re here, babe, you’re fine, and we can pro—”

“No one can protect anyone, not really!” Liam yelled, shoving Louis away from himself. He scrabbled backward until he was flush with the wall. “No one is safe.”

“I can—fuck, god, we can do our best to make sure you’re okay.”

“It’s not enough. It’s never enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me please. I love you. Comment here. I'm sorry.


End file.
